


Death Wish

by HCN



Category: Casino Royale (2006), James Bond (Craig movies), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-23 22:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7482663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HCN/pseuds/HCN
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six ways women have killed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Wish

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [v1als](http://v1als.tumblr.com) for betaing!

**One.** _In anger._

Raoul walked a few feet in front of her, every so often leaning in to the man walking on his right. Their words were lost in the wind and the snatches she heard were in one of the many languages Raoul spoke that she didn’t.

Séverine ducked her head and pushed forward, moving to walk closer behind Raoul. The bulk of his body sheltered the next onslaught of wind, this time tinged with rain, and she walked alongside him, blinking drops of water away from her stinging eyes. She remembered the orders he gave her before they left to meet this new contact, when he handed her a gun and reminded her how important it was that they bring him back safely. He trusted her! She didn’t know what more she could ask for.

They reached the hotel just as the rain was really starting to come down, growing from a few small droplets to a storm.

“Séverine, darling,” Raoul said. He turned to face her, smiling. “Our guest surely wants to see his room, maybe get out of his wet jacket. I have just one thing I must take care of, and then I’ll be with you shortly.”

She led the man up the stairs, taking note of how he walked, how he moved. He seemed confident, but then Raoul only associated with the best. When he smiled at her it was polite, albeit guarded. Guarded was good. Guarded meant he knew that Raoul was dangerous, so he’d know better than to hurt her, although this time she had a gun in case he tried.

“This way to your room,” she said as they stepped off the elevator and made their way down the hall. She reached into her pocket to find his key, opening the door and holding it for him. Politely he nodded to her before taking a step inside and looking at where Raoul would be keeping him.

It was as far as he got before gunshots echoed across the room, and Séverine watched as the man tumbled to the floor, not rising again.

Séverine had a minute to watch as the scene in front of her unfolded, as the two men waiting to ambush them moved into view, one checking the body and the other turning towards the door. She ducked against the wall of the hallway, expecting the worst, gunshots followed by pain, but it didn’t come.

The realization that she as alive was short lived, no sooner acknowledged than replaced by something else. Her hands groped for the gun and she grabbed it, cocked it, pulled off the safety and turned into the room, firing. Once, into the back of the man crouched on the ground, twice, into the shoulder of the second. The first man collapsed and the second now turned to her, his own gun raised and ready to return fire.

She shot him in the stomach before he could, then shot again and again as she approached him. The bloody heel of her boot made contact with the wound in his gut and she ground her foot against it, watching as his body writhed and he opened his mouth to scream.

“Shut up!” she shouted. “Shut _up!_ Who are you? Who in the hell are you?” She shot the ground next to his head. He flinched, moving to the right but unable to flinch away while she towered over him, pinning him to the spot. She could kill him now, but Raoul would want to question him.

Séverine heard something rustle off to the side, a movement she didn’t expect. She turned, gun at the ready, and fired at the first man she shot, right through the head after his body fell back to the ground.

She held her position, frozen in place as she watched his blood spread onto the carpet, pooling around his head, now with fragments of bone and brain scattered across the carpeted floor. Her hand was shaking around the gun, her arm poised; Séverine tightened her grip to still the muscles, staring at the dead man and hating him for dying, because killing him made her no less a failure. Raoul wanted his contact alive, and safe, and now he wasn’t.

She shot the corpse again, once more in the back for good measure.

* * *

**Two.** _For revenge._

Growing up, the man kind enough to take her in – a friend of her mother’s – told Camille time and time again to be careful.

“You are alive,” he said. “Feel lucky for that.”

“I’ll kill him,” Camille said.

“You tempt fate,” he told her. “You were lucky to survive once. Do you want to throw that away? For what?”

“He’ll die,” she said. “It will be Medrano who dies.”

He shook his head, smiling slightly at her. “Arrogant little girl.”

It wasn’t that the world was too small for them both; the world was big, bigger than it had ever been now that she was alone. If she ran far enough she knew she could lose herself forever, never to be found by anyone who might hurt her, but it would not be enough. It would not stop the burning she still felt long after her skin healed.

Medrano was a void, tainting the sky and every second she remembered that her parents and sister weren’t there to join her. Every morning she woke and found a fire relit within herself, every day burning hotter. Soon it was hot enough to forge her will like iron. When the time came for her to strike, she would be ready.

First she went to the Bolivian secret service, but to them Medrano one of many terrible men and not even so terrible when held against the rest. To Bolivia Medrano was an afterthought; to Camille he was her first thought every morning.

The night before Camille left the secret service a woman she worked with asked, “What do you think will happen when you find him? There are others like him.”

“Others will get them,” Camille said. “They always leave survivors.”

The look in her eyes told Camille she knew that, understanding the nature of that cruelty deeper than just horrified facts.

She wondered how many survivors her father left, or if he was smarter than that. It did him no good either way.

“Why do you do it?” she asked Camille.

“For my family.”

“It won’t help them. They’re dead. They still will be, no matter what you do.”

Camille snorted. “They’ll know.”

Camille didn’t understand how this woman didn’t take up arms herself, and how she could still her thoughts and content herself with serving the world.

Every night was the same, lying back and thinking of home, thinking of her father and mother, her sister, how they died and she did not. And so Camille endured Dominic, testing her mettle with every smile and drink, every time she spread her legs and let the bastard use her body. Every personal compromise strengthened her resolve. She would do whatever it took to kill Medrano. No compromise was too great; no pain was too much.

So with her stomach on the floor and her back facing the fire – her skin blistering against the superheated air and cracking, her lungs boiling – she finally pulled the trigger. There were so many ways she imagined this moment, and every imagined death always fuelled by a righteous fury on behalf of the family unable to avenge themselves.

As Medrano fell against the floor she felt something in the air cool. Her thoughts weren’t for the family she lost, the ones whose bodies were never buried, but for herself, the young girl who escaped the flames once and who now lay exhausted with another fire encroaching on her.

* * *

**Three.** _Methodically._

Buying expensive poisons involved a long, drawn out process, but thankfully Le Chiffre established enough connections that it was easier than it was for most. But Le Chiffre had an image to maintain, and in a world where no one could trust anyone, it was important not to give one’s enemies reason to trust you even less. Eventually he relented, allowing Valenka to use her own poisons that were far less discrete but notably easier to obtain. The dead body, she said, was enough of a hint of foul play at work.

Identifying the target and studying them was an ongoing process, and a long one. With any luck there were a profile somewhere, but it wasn’t always like that. There were times when she acted with no preparation, relying on instinct; Le Chiffre hated that, too, but assassination wasn’t his area of expertise. He might be fine to get his hands dirty, but poison was always a woman’s method so of course he wouldn’t understand the nuance it involved.

The dress was vital, sexual but forgettable, alluring enough that the body distracted from her face, from her identity, from any untoward intentions she might possess as she swanned into a room. The real secret was being able to slip in unnoticed, moving from room to room unseen, without betraying guilt or worry about the possibility of what might wrong, even as a man lay dying on the ground.

Valenka was not an assassin. She was not a body guard. Out of everyone in their entourage, she believed herself to have killed the fewest people.

Sometimes, though, circumstances demanded discretion not best left to men whose job primarily consisted of looking intimidating and sending out the message that it would not be a smart idea to cross them. And so the job fell to her, delicate and discrete if not elegant (because really, there was nothing elegant about a corpse, no matter how little blood there was).

Out of everyone, she was the only one who could claim that not one of her targets ever got away from her.

* * *

**Four.** _On orders._

“Take the bloody shot!”

Eve pulled the trigger.

The gunshot cracked next to her ear, deafeningly loud and violent. Through the scope she watched as Bond tensed. The moment of impact was fast, like hitting a wall. He had no time to respond; all he did was fall.

Everything happened in slow motion. If there was a splash, Eve didn’t hear it. The train disappeared through the tunnel, her missed target looking at her over his shoulder, then gone. Everything was silent.

She’d watched through the scope as Bond tried to put distance between himself and the target, separating himself from his target so Eve could get her clean shot. He had his earpiece in; he would have known what was coming.

She wanted to say this through the line, to protest her innocence somehow – that she’d waited, and if she had a minute longer than she might have hit her target

“Agent down.”

* * *

**Five.** _Indirectly_.

“Take the bloody shot!”

Down the comms M heard a gunshot, then silence.

This was not the first time M had given such an order. It wouldn’t be the last. Every time an agent was on the field he or she was aware of the danger that entailed. Every time M gave a risky order she was aware what the outcome might be.

If she couldn’t trust herself to risk the lives of her agents, nothing would get done.

“Agent down.”

M stood abruptly and turned her back to her desk, facing the window and staring outside at the Thames below. When she turned away from this window there would be work to be done, and a lot of it, between the still missing hard drive and what would be done about all the agents listed on it, not to mention organising a search party to retrieve what was left of Bond.

Damn it. Out of everything she expected to happen to him, she didn’t expect this.

She braced herself before finally turning away from the window. There was work to be done, whether she wanted to do it or not.

* * *

**Six.** _By proxy_.

Corinne left the flat, her head bowed and her purse clutched tightly in her hand. In the silence that followed, the click of the door echoed audibly through the room, and then lasted a while longer before finally Yusef spoke.

“Whatever you do, just make it quick,” Yusef said.

Bond dropped to a seat across from Yusef, watching as he flinched but didn’t move, nor reach for any hidden weapon. In the dim light Bond watched as Yusef looked for a weapon, hoping for one because anything else meant Bond would kill him with his own hands.

A tempting thought, but not practical.

The necklace made a loud _clink_ as Bond set it on the table.

“I believe this is yours,” Bond said, sliding it across the table. At Yusef’s hesitance, Bond slit it further, the sound of metal against wood grating on both their ears. “Go on. Take it.”

Yusef hesitated again, but Bond didn’t waver. Finally, Yusef reached forward and snapped it off the table, holding it in his hand.

“She loved you a great deal,” Bond said.

“Yeah,” Yusef agreed. “I – yeah, she did. She loved you, too. Didn’t she?”

The skin around Bond’s eyes crinkled. “She did.”

“So where is she now?” Yusef asked. “What happened to her, in the end?”

Bond reached into his jacket. Across the table he watched Yusef flinch, expecting a gun, and Bond enjoyed the second of power it gave him but didn’t hesitate, pulling out a folded photograph and laying that, too, on the table.

When Bond didn’t move, Yusef eventually edged forward, taking the picture and unfolding it. His breath hitched and he stared, just like Bond had stared at the picture as well, wondering who this man could be.

“It was found with her belongings,” he said, inwardly smiling when Yusef jumped. “It was taken for evidence, after she died.”

“She died.” A statement repeated, not a question. Yusef didn’t sound disbelieving, but he almost sounded shocked.

“What did you think would happen to her?”

“I didn’t want her to die,” Yusef said. “She wasn’t supposed to.”

“Surely you didn’t think she was safe.”

Yusef opened his mouth, then closed it. Bond continued.

“You want to tell me you love her, to insist that that was real, that you couldn’t do this if you didn’t – not convincingly. Then you’ll want to tell me that you always meant to keep her safe, and you didn’t think any actual harm would come to her.”

“I didn’t mean for her to die.”

“She did,” Bond said. “Now, my people are on their way here as we speak. When they arrive, they’re going to want to bring you in for questioning.”

“Your people,” Yusef repeated.

“Yes,” Bond said. “You may have heard of them. MI6?”

Yusef drew in a breath. “I see.”

“Now, I think it’s clear that Vesper Lynd wasn’t the first woman you’ve drawn in with your charm,” Bond said, “and I don’t think England or the Canadians are the only countries who will want to have words with you. As part of a number of international agreements, we’ll have to hand you over. Who else do you think is going to want to speak to you?”

Yusef looked at him. The fear was there, hidden behind the pinched brows, but his jaw was set and he was staring straight at Bond.

“What do you want?”

Bond’s face tightened, his frightening impression of a smile pushing against his skin as he reached into his jacket. This time it was a gun he pulled from his belt, and with a loud thump he lowered it on the table. Again, the room sat in silence.

“This is about what you want,” Bond said. “If I bring you in, you’ll live, at least for a time. What happens to you once MI6 is done with you – well, that’s anyone’s guess.”

Yusef looked at Bond, waiting for him to go on but he didn’t.

Bond could see the moment the realisation, when Yusef’s eyes widened and he looked at Bond, then down to the gun, then to Bond again. He shook his head. “You can’t be serious, man.”

“Oh, I am serious.” He glanced toward the window. “You might want to make your mind up fast. It looks like my people are waiting outside now. I doubt they’ll wait long.”

“She wouldn’t want you to do this,” Yusef said.

“You’re right. But she’s not here, is she?”

Finally, he reached out for the gun, his hand shaking the whole time as he raised it to his head, staring at Bond and waiting for him to change his mind. Bond sat, still with his hands crossed, and waited, watching as Yusef shuddered when he didn’t change his mind.


End file.
